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Solid state DAC under 12K retail preferably with ethernet

Looking to upgrade from AMR DP-777 and go solid state.
These are the ones I know or read about: Bricasti, Berkeley, Aeris, DirectStream, ODSE, Meitner, Luxman DA-06

Am I missing any other important DACs I should be looking at or reading about?
Currently leaning towards Bricasti M1 SE.

Rest of my system: Coincident Frankenstein Mk 2 300b amps, Devore O96
essrand
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
I rarely post comments in user forums but regarding the Bricasti M1 I feel compelled to comment. For the past few months I have owned the M1 limited gold with built in ethernet interface and must say that it is simply the most elegant piece of electronics I have ever had. I have listened to the Berkeley reference dac and have owned the Empirical Audio Overdrive SX but the M1 with ethernet takes sound reproduction to an etherial level.

I would be up for a shootout between M1 with DLNA Ethernet and Overdrive SX with DNLA Ethernet.  The Overdrive SX is a different animal now.  Many upgrades to it.  20psec of jitter, Duelund caps etc..

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

drstarbug32
3 posts
 
Sorry for the misunderstanding.   For comparison I used the N 10 fed into the Empirical Audio Overdrive SX (using a Stealth Varig 16 coaxial cable).  At that time my regular set up was the mac mini/berkeley alpha fed into the overdrive sx.  For several reasons I abandoned the overdrive sx and replaced it with the M1 gold edition.  The M1/ethernet is far superior to either set up in terms of convenience and more importantly sound quality.  
lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,795 posts
 
@drstarbug32,

That makes sense. Glad to hear you’re enjoying the M1/Ethernet. One certainly can’t overlook the convenience of one box solution. Looks like that’s the latest industry trend as we see more and more DAC’s are now adding network interface and media renderer option. 

I am very content with my N10 and ARC DAC9 combo 😉


sunandmusic
27 posts
 
Sorry for the misunderstanding. For comparison I used the N 10 fed into the Empirical Audio Overdrive SX (using a Stealth Varig 16 coaxial cable). At that time my regular set up was the mac mini/berkeley alpha fed into the overdrive sx. For several reasons I abandoned the overdrive sx and replaced it with the M1 gold edition. The M1/ethernet is far superior to either set up in terms of convenience and more importantly sound quality.

I would hazard that the shift from USB convertor / fixer to Ethernet is part of the upgrade you are experiencing. I heard the same going from the OffRamp 5 and USB to Rednet Ethernet.

Going back to the Davinci comments, I would also hazard that is the natural sonics from a good NOS design with no filtering and chip logic, i.e. straight through, no messing.

Half of these subjects become over compacted by peoples obsession with data conversion to DSD or upsamplng. If you stay as resident sample rate on a true NOS DAC, it sounds more natural anyway to me. Ditch the messing around with the file, just feed the DAC as it was intended, i.e. same resolution.

The possible 'improvements' in sound by messing with the data rate may help with some DS designs, but ones I have tried just make it worse IMO.


yyzsantabarbara
5,123 posts
 
From Briscati:
"Roon Ready is in the final stages of the process for the M12 and we anticipate its completion soon. I’ve been testing the Roon code myself and it works great. I look forward to hearing from. "
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